By
Sikivu Hutchinson
Black lesbian poet and activist Audre Lourde once said,
“If I didn't define myself for
myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten
alive.” Lourde was one of the most fiercely eloquent champions of the
revolutionary right of black women to witness and speak their truths in
resistance to silence.
Her words resonate deeply as the fortieth anniversary
of the Jonestown massacre approaches. Black women lived, loved, struggled, and
died in disproportionate numbers in Jonestown.
Their belief in the revolutionary promise of the settlement was a
testament to their long legacy of activism and organizing in the face of
erasure. Renewed public interest in the tragedy will no doubt elicit another
round of questions about the Peoples Temple community, its politics, and its
status as a historical “curiosity”. In
an effort to counter the marginalization of black women in these spaces, I have
tried to bring black voices to the page, stage, and screen, through adaptations
of my novel White
Nights, Black Paradise. As a
piece of speculative fiction, White
Nights, Black Paradise is interested in troubling the boundaries between
“fact” and “fiction” in order to expose how myths about Jonestown were
constructed over time through multiple interpretations, voices, and memories. Throughout
the adaptation process, I have been acutely aware of the ways in which black
experiences in Jonestown are often appropriated for mainstream consumption; taken
out of context and depoliticized. In an
era in which black folk continue to struggle with the legacies of slavery, Jim
Crow, and racialized sexual violence, the prevailing narrative of hoodwinked
black women without agency has become an insidious cliché.
In response to these issues, I organized a black
women survivors’ panel discussion at San Francisco’s Museum
of the African Diaspora this summer in conjunction with the screening of my
short film on White Nights, Black Paradise.
The panel
featured Leslie Wagner Wilson, Jordan Vilchez, Yulanda Williams, and Rebecca
Moore. The packed audience included
other members of the Peoples Temple community from the Bay Area.
Building on the film’s themes, the panel was
designed to elevate black women’s experiences and stories. Leslie’s powerful book Slavery
of Faith chronicles her life in Peoples Temple and her dramatic escape
from Jonestown hours before the 1978 massacre.
Jordan and Yulanda were both involved with the Temple at a young age and
left Jonestown prior to the massacre. Rebecca,
the only white woman on the panel, lost several family members at Jonestown and
has published three books
on the settlement.
The discussion ranged from the women’s personal
accounts of being in Jonestown to the internal divisions that belied the
movement’s veneer of multiracial harmony. Leslie and I have critiqued the racial and gender hierarchy that
existed in the movement’s leadership, and the degree to which Jones’ white
women lieutenants were complicit in its escalating climate of intimidation,
abuse, and harassment. During one
exchange, Leslie and Yulanda took issue with Rebecca’s characterization of
power and authority in Jonestown. While
Leslie and Yulanda recalled that African American members had little official
authority in Jonestown, Rebecca made reference to the diverse work assignments
that black folks fulfilled. Leslie and
Yulanda vividly recalled the harsh living conditions in Jonestown and compared
it to being in a slave camp. What came
through most powerfully in these exchanges was the differing “class” positions
Jonestown members had within the compound’s power structure; with younger white
women being the most privileged and favored.
Leslie and Yulanda also emphasized the pivotal role Jones’ whiteness
played in eliciting support and adulation in the black community.
As I have argued in previous articles, Jones’
minstrel-like ability to evoke both white savior-hood and black nationalism—in
order to appeal to African Americans—is a familiar theme in American politics
and pop culture. Some on the panel
likened Jones’ appeal to that of the charismatic, benevolent white Jesus figure
force fed to blacks under slavery. Panelists
also highlighted Jones’ status as a power broker in the Bay Area political
establishment, emphasizing how this made public officials more willing to cosign
the Temple’s activities despite widespread allegations of abuse and
exploitation within the church. Some of
this abuse and exploitation was directed toward LGBTQ members of the church due
to Jones’ (who often went on homophobic tirades yet engaged in sex with men)
internalized homophobia. As moderator, I contextualized the way in
which the African American community of Fillmore was primed to embrace Jones’
“radical” social gospel ethos in light of poverty, job discrimination, state
violence, and the mass displacements that rocked Fillmore as a result of the
region’s “urban renewal” regime.
Why did it take nearly forty years for this kind of
discussion to take place? The comments
we received after the event indicated that there is high interest in the rich
social history of black Jonestown. One
audience member commented that they were moved by “The courage, power and heartfelt words of wisdom,
and that (they) did not know the majority of membership were black women.” Another related that they were interested in
“The hierarchy of the Jonestown system (and) was so honored to hear survivors”,
while being “unaware of the escapees & survivors (thinking) all had perished.”
These
comments underscore the need for more black feminist literary and scholarly appraisals
of the black diasporic experience in Jonestown vis-à-vis religion, black
women’s self-determination, and the event’s contemporary significance. In adapting White Nights, Black Paradise as a stage play, I hope to extend the
conversation.
The play
brings the media construction of Jonestown narratives into greater focus—foregrounding
the divide between the lived experiences, dreams, ambitions, and politics of its
black women protagonists and mainstream fascination with the “perversity” of
the massacre. The play opens with the
character of a night watchwoman at the Dover Delaware Air force Base (the
military morgue where the bodies of Jonestown victims were shipped after the
massacre) banging on an old TV as the sound of a newscast about the event echoes
overhead. The banging is an allusion to
the throwback practice of hitting old TVs to get a clearer picture. The distorted cultural picture that the
public has been provided of Jonestown and Peoples Temple is a recurring theme
throughout the play, which is “presided over” by a Greek chorus of black women
who give commentary on the play’s events. The chorus is critical to the play’s
meta-analysis of the invisibility of black women’s lives, voices, and social
histories in the popular imagination of Jonestown. It is also an artistic device that seeks to
problematize reductive notions of black female selfhood, identity, and
religious ideology (for example, throughout the play the chorus critiques
organized religion and respectability politics). In the play, as in the book,
the fictional character of black activist journalist Ida Lassiter pursues an “investigation”
into the Temple’s dealings and becomes personally embroiled in relationships
with Jones, other members and the black press.
As a once revered independent journalist, Lassiter represents the
ambivalent relationship the black and mainstream press had with Peoples Temple
and Jim Jones. Although the real life
African American activist/publisher and physician Dr. Carlton Goodlett
bankrolled the Peoples Forum, there has been little exploration of the black
press’ role in either promoting or critiquing Peoples Temple pre-Jonestown. Hence, I was interested in exploring the
political influence the (critical) black press had on the movement, highlighting
tensions between Lassiter and Hampton Goodwin, the Carlton Goodlett character. The mass removals in the Fillmore community,
and the socioeconomic challenges confronting African Americans during the post
civil rights and black power eras, also take center stage in the play.
Ultimately, it is my hope that these artistic
explorations lead to more platforms for survivors and scholars of color—in
resistance to the white gaze “crunch(ing) us into other peoples’ fantasies.”
*This article originally appeared at Alternative Considerations of Jonestown
The first staged reading of
the play adaptation White Nights, Black Paradise, will be on December 14th
at the Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles.
